The present invention relates to identification of ownership and usage rights of media objects (such as image, video and audio data) as they are disseminated on the Internet.
Transmission of media objects (including, e.g., images, video and audio) on the Internet is quick and simple. While advantageous in many aspects, one problem with technologies that enable the distribution of multimedia objects through the Internet is that they can also make media objects available to an audience that does not have the right to consume the works.
The term “media object” can refer to audio, video, image, graphic, multimedia, textual, and interactive data files that are delivered to a user's computer via a communication network such as the Internet. A media object can also be a streaming media file that is transferred through a networked environment and that plays on the user's computer before delivery of the entire file is completed and/or a file that is stored on a user's computer. Examples of media objects include digitally recorded music, movies, trailers, shows, news reports, still images, radio broadcasts and recordings of live events that are available through the Internet. Means for accessing the communications networks to obtain media files include high-bandwidth connections such as cable, DSL and T1 communication lines.
New technologies that allow easier and faster processing and transmission of media objects accelerate their distribution. This resulting ease of distribution makes it difficult for copyright holders to the content of such materials to track consumption of their works. Finding a specific media object buried among the many files on the Web and the identification of the associated usage rights is typically a very difficult task. The volume and variety of media objects distributed on the Internet is likely to continue to increase at a rather substantial pace. This growth, combined with the highly decentralized nature of the Internet, creates substantial difficulty in locating particular informational content and therefore makes it difficult for copyright owners to track and control the use of their content. For example, there are many clips of copyrighted TV content, such as news reports, comedy sketches and sports events published by 3rd parties on the Internet without the knowledge or consent of the copyright owner. One platform for distribution of such content are User Generated Content (UGC) sites that have recently gained popularity. They do however not only contain content generated by users but include content that users upload without having the rights to it. Another example for a widely used distribution platform is so called peer-to-peer software that allows computer users to share files amongst them without the use of a centralized data repository.
The problem of unidentified content has become particularly apparent in recent months with online video sites rumored to be distributing more than one hundred million video clips daily. The distribution of this content in combination with advertising has a substantial commercial value, demonstrated by a law suit filed against a leading online video provider that claims damages in excess of one billion dollars. Technologies that identify the content owner can help to eliminate or reduce the legal risk that content distributors are facing when distributing copyrighted content. They furthermore can help to create revenue for a content owner, when revenues from advertisement displayed with the content are shared between the content distributor and the content owner.
To solve or alleviate the problem three main solutions have been created and refined in the past. One approach for identifying media objects compares the metadata associated with a media file, such as file name, Universal Resource Indicator, or information such as the title directly encoded in the file, to a database of metadata associated with known media files. A limitation of this approach is that the information required for this approach to be effective is often removed during illegal distribution of the content.
Another approach is the identification of media objects with digital watermarks that invisibly embed robust information in the content before distribution, such that the content that has undergone a marking procedure can be automatically identified by reading that mark out of the content itself. To enable that protection, all content to be protected has to be marked prior to any public distribution using digital processing of the media. The mark can reliably be read from content that has undergone limited degradation but is often unreadable if significant geometric distortions have been applied and the shape and size and playback speed varies from its original format.
A third way of identifying media objects is by comparing the physical characteristics of media objects. A technique called fingerprinting aims to determine if a copy of a media object is derived from a specific copyrighted source, even if those media objects have undergone transformations like re-recording and compression. For comparison, existing media objects that are to be identified have to be registered and their fingerprints are determined. Two files with a limited variation between them that have the same or similar fingerprints are likely to contain the same content. Combined with a priori knowledge of who is the legitimate rights holder to the media object, this information can be used to identify intellectual property rights. A challenge with this approach is the complexity of comparison of an ever growing volume of copyrighted media content with the rapidly growing number of media objects available on the Internet.